Coming Full Circle for Esme, Little Saint of Cincinnati, with Love and Squalor

I notice that today is the seventh of the month, which marks the passing of thirteen year old Esme Louise Kenney, little saint of Cincinnati, Ohio, this time twenty eight months ago. It’s a good time to consolidate recent events and their meaning in my heart.

Jogging a few weeks ago, I passed through Calvary Cemetery, my usual custom, which invariably got me to thinking about Esme. Outside the gates along the sidewalk, I chanced on a sheet of music. It contained a continuous refrain, filling both sides of the sheet, "Who whilst among the choir above, thou dost thy former skill improve."

I intuitively inferred that hereon I was learning about the status of Esme, who was aptly and preternaturally named after the character with self-assured imperturbability and aplomb in J.D. Salinger’s story, For Esme, with Love and Squalor. She, like her namesake, sang in a children’s choir. When I got home I reread Salinger. "At three-fifteen, the board stated, there would be children's-choir practice… Her voice was distinctly separate from the other children's voices, and not just because she was seated nearest me. It had the best upper register, the sweetest-sounding, the surest, and it automatically led the way."

I recalled what a teacher had written about Esme’s singing, due to her enrollment in Children’s Choir at Cincinnati’s School for the Creative and Performing Arts. “Gosh, I would stand outside room 313 during my lunch bell, the bell when Esme's choir rehearsed, and pick out all of the voices I recognized, and to my ears, hers stood out the most.”

I believe in signs. Esme is now a better singer.

At about the same time, I received in the mail a lot won at auction that is a first day cover with a plate number strip of stamps that commemorates the 150th anniversary of the defeat of General Burgoyne during the Revolutionary War. The envelope was franked in New York City, an “unofficial city” that the Post Office did not intend to allow for the first day of issue. The dealer stated the cover was unique.

First day cover of Scott 644 strip of five with plate number single

But what really caught my attention was that it was addressed in 1927 to someone living at 728 Circle Drive in Cincinnati. I Google-mapped the address….one block east of Winton Avenue as it passes Spring Grove Cemetery where Esme is memorialized with a planting of a Weeping Higin cherry tree. What were the chances of this?

Said before, I believe in signs. That was when I dropped what I was doing and got in my car to go there. I had to go. I took my journal.

At Spring Grove, next to the cherry, I reread what a friend had written. “I want to mirror your immensity. I want never to be too weak or too old to bear the heavy, lurching image of you. I want to unfold. Let no place in me hold itself closed, for where I am closed, I am false. I want to stay clear in your sight.” She included a photo of Esme sitting at the dining room table when she was nine.

This had been my response. “Esme, you are etched into my soul. Your silence has become the voice of those who love you, who gladly bear your heavy, lurching image like a cross, who sat in that very chair eating your mother's duck dinner, who lit ashen rockets that lifted prayers and tears in your name up to the ceiling from where your computer sits, who you've taught by your love that embraced everyone you met never to remain closed and false, who slept on the floor under your drawings and poems and next to your books, feeling the patter of your feet over the oaken floor boards, who you have inspired to write and compose poetry from the heart, who have attempted to walk your lonely, horrific passion around a reservoir in a sympathetic attempt for it to become theirs and not just yours, prostrate all night in the snow and again all night in the rain under blinking Star Tower at your Golgotha where you gave up your last breath, embracing your immensity that appealed to the fatherhood of your tormentor upon that spot, causing conscience to replace falsehood long enough to put away for life any chance that others befall your fate, who call you their hero, their model of sainthood, who hope to gain by your sacrifice a chance to become like you, to stay clear in your sight.”

“E.L.K.” is written on the placard permanently affixed around the cherry for Esme Louise Kenney. Suddenly another kind of ungulate, the common whitetail deer, Odocoileus virginianus, bounded past within a few meters of where I was sitting.

“Hi, Esme.”

Camped that night at Big Bone Lick State Park in Kentucky, I walked in reverie, marveling at the goodness of nature’s lush deciduous architecture all suspended in pouring rain, and showing Esme how the wet leaves of the woods, filled with white oaks, walnuts, hickories, eastern junipers, paw paws, green ashes, and honey locusts, have spiritual connotations. Back in camp, I reflected on my experience.

“Leaves are small, numerous solar collectors, perpendicular to the sun for maximum absorption of light, and flat for maximum dispersal of heat with minimum weight per leaf. They are arrayed upon a scaffolding of twigs, which distributes them in layers that fill the volume of the canopy. Instead of raising one large ‘arm’ that displays one huge leaf, a tree raises many small fingers that display many small leaves easily over wide horizontal and vertical dimensions. Viewed from the side of the tree, one sees a lot of empty space for maximum ventilation. Viewed from above the tree, one sees what appears to be a continuous sheet of light-intercepting green. I think that architecture of leaves in ways that maximize utility and economy is fabulous! In fact, leaves in light are windows into the souls of trees.

Esme, you are like a leaf in light, a window into the soul of humanity. About that, you will never be forgotten.”

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The following is a response by Esme’s mom that explores further the phenomenon of “circle” reflected at Spring Grove Cemetery.

Here is an aerial view of where we said goodbye to Esme. From the cemetery map you can not tell that it is a "circle," but it shows up on Google Earth. It was in the center of this circle that we were able to spend a few minutes with her between the coroner's office and her cremation. Her memorial tree is to the left, west of the road.